On the Outlaw Trail.

You could stick a pin just about anywhere in a map of Utah and there would be some interesting aspect of Old West history that happened there. The northeastern part of Utah below Wyoming and next to Colorado is no exception. Brown’s Hole (Brown’s Park, if you prefer) and Diamond Mountain are there. And the Outlaw Trail, leading from Hole in the Wall in Wyoming to Robbers Roost in Utah, runs through the Uinta Basin and most every outlaw in the history of the Intermountain West frequented the area.

 Among them was Matt Warner, the bandit who introduced Butch Cassidy to the outlaw life, and subject of my historical novel, OUTLAWMAN: The Life and Times of Matt Warner.

On July 22, I will be in Vernal, the heart of the Uinta Basin, where Matt Warner was arrested for murder following a gunfight where he killed two men and wounded another, speaking at the Uintah County Library. (Uintah and Uinta are both correct spellings, depending on circumstances, but that’s a story for another day.) I’ll be speaking about Warner’s life and times, reading a few selections from the book, and visiting with people about one of the Old West’s most notorious outlaws, who later became a respected lawman.

If you’re anywhere near the area we’d love to see you there. There’s a lot to do and see in the Uinta Basin, including a bank on Vernal’s main street built back around 1916 from 37 tons of bricks—every one of which arrived in town with a postage stamp, via parcel post. That, too, is a story for another day.

Remembering 9/11.

September 11. A date burned into history like a brand. The date of the deadliest mass murder on American soil. But the 9/11 chronicled in With a Kiss I Die occurred in 1857 at a place called Mountain Meadows in Utah Territory—an evil deed unsurpassed in bloody violence until its one hundred and forty-fourth anniversary in 2001. 

With a Kiss I Die—A Novel of the Massacre at Mountain Meadows  is a love story entwined in the tragedy of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Polly Alden, a young California-bound Arkansas emigrant, falls in love with Tom Langford, a Mormon boy she meets in the settlements of Utah Territory. Caught between the fear and hatred of the persecuted Saints for the emigrants, and the hostility of the emigrants toward Mormons who will not replenish their dwindling supplies, the young lovers defy mistrust and opposition as they aspire to a life together.

Animosity between the emigrants and the settlers grows as the wagon train makes its way south through the territory, culminating in the blood-stained soil of Mountain Meadows.

Follow the trail of the Arkansas emigrants and the blossoming affection of the star-crossed lovers in a compelling, engaging tale inspired by history—and the eternal conflict between good and evil, hatred and love—through the pages of With a Kiss I Die.

 

A Thousand Dead Horses hit the trail.

 
    After being bedridden for six months because of the coronavirus pandemic, A Thousand Dead Horses is finally on the market.
    By happenstance, like Pinebox Collins, the novel that precedes it, it features a main character with a wooden leg. But I had no choice this time. The book is based on a historic horse-stealing expedition from the 1840s, and one of the primary perpetrators of that adventure was famed mountain man Thomas L. “Pegleg” Smith. Honest.
    Besides Pegleg Smith, the story features other characters from history including mountain men “Old Bill” Williams and James Beckwourth, and Ute leader Wakara. The horses and mules they stole are real, too—but I don’t know their names.
    Marc Cameron, New York Times bestselling author of the Jericho Quinn political thrillers, the Arliss Cutter crime novels, and several of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels, says, “A Thousand Dead Horses crackles with the authentic voice of a writer who knows how to sit a horse—and tell a terrific story. Fire embers snap, saddle leather groans—and the richly drawn characters pull you along with them on their adventure.”
    The story, based on history from the Old West, will take you from Santa Fe to California and back again on the Old Spanish Trail.
    Ride along.

 

My Favorite Book, Part 23.

One of the great stories of the Old West is the life of Cynthia Ann Parker. And the best telling of the story is the novel Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson.

 At about age nine, the Texas girl was kidnapped by Comanche raiders during an attack on her extended family. Her introduction to Comanche ways was brutal, but she was accepted by the band and adapted to their ways, eventually becoming the wife of a leader, and giving birth to one of the most famous Comanche leaders, known to history as Quanah Parker.

Robson’s research digs deep into the era, particularly the minute details of day-to-day Comanche life. But that research never gets in the way of her telling a compelling, absorbing, riveting story. The book’s title comes from the author’s knowledge of Cynthia Ann—Naduah, to the Comanche—as one of the horses she rode was called Wind. 

When “rescued” by Texas Rangers after some twenty-four years living as a Comanche, Cynthia Ann Parker never fit into white society and died, some say of a broken heart, following the death of her Comanche daughter, Prairie Flower.

Ride the Wind won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and numerous other accolades, when published in 1982, and has remained popular ever since, and remains in print. As it should.

One sitting each.

A “short story” has been defined as one that can be read in one sitting. That being the case, Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories, a new anthology from Five Star, is good for seventeen sittings.

Some of my favorite Western writers, including Loren D. Estleman, Johnny D. Boggs, and John D. Nesbitt are featured here. And there is a story by yours truly.

“The Times of a Sign” is about mules and jacks and horses and thievery, as it tells of a young man who takes part in a horse-stealing expedition to California, which leads to establishing a mule- and oxen-breeding operation in Missouri. As he explains to a questioner the absurdity of the sign advertising his enterprise, he relates the adventure of establishing the business.

The sign reads:

for sale

mules and oxen

breeding stock

     

What could possibly upset him so? One sitting with Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories will answer that question.

A look into the future.

Five Star, publisher of several of my books, just sent the cover design for my forthcoming novel, Pinebox Collins.

It’s about a one-legged itinerant undertaker in the Old West.

From the battlefields of the Civil War, Jonathon “Pinebox” Collins wanders the West seeking his place in the world. Cow towns, mining towns, boomtowns, small towns, growing cities—he tries them all.

Along the way, he witnesses what, where, and how the West changes America and the world. And he sees who makes it happen, crossing paths with pivotal people of the times. Among them, “Wild Bill” Hickok, whose trail repeatedly intersects with Pinebox’s.

Pinebox Collins offers a unique view of the Old West, through the eyes of a man who looks death in the eye every day.

The book is due for release in March 2020. Put it on your “to-do” list.